J&J moves to strike Kolodny testimony

I was thrilled when I saw this so I’m posting it quickly without much comment. I think we might finally be seeing the undoing of our prime tormentor, Andrew Kolodny.

Johnson & Johnson has asked the judge overseeing the first in an expected wave of trials against the opioid industry to strike the testimony of Dr. Andrew Kolodny, a psychiatrist who plays a central role in the State of Oklahoma’s case by linking narcotics marketing to opioid addiction and overdose deaths.

Calling Dr. Kolodny “a de facto member of the State’s legal team,” J&J said Oklahoma gave the Brandeis University researcher unfettered access to some 90 million internal documents obtained through discovery and used his expert testimony to

“pollute the trial record with rampant hearsay,

rank speculation, and

the State’s own take on the evidence.”

Experts like Dr. Kolodny play a crucial role in the opioid litigation, since the plaintiffs – mostly states, cities and counties claiming to be seeking to recover opioid-related expenditures – appear to have settled on a strategy of “aggregate proof” under which they will present expert testimony, instead of specific examples, to show a connection between pharmaceutical industry practices and the increase in opioid abuse.

Defendants like J&J therefore have a strong incentive to knock out these expert witnesses as unqualified.

That shouldn’t be too hard in this case. We know Kolodny’s claims aren’t supported by the facts and now this will finally be publicly revealed since millions of dollars of fines are riding on it.

Over five days on the stand, Dr. Kolodny touched on every element of Oklahoma’s case, including extensive testimony about how J&J’s ownership of a wholesale opioid ingredient business in Tasmania made it the “kingpin” of the opioid industry.

Kolodny, co-director of Opioid Policy Research for the Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management in Massachusetts, also accused J&J of funding pain-treatment organizations and other groups he termed an “opioid Mafia.”

In Dr. Kolodny’s pretrial deposition, taken two days after Oxycontin-manufacturer Purdue Pharma settled with Oklahoma, J&J says the physician for the first time discussed how the company’s Noramco and Tasmanian Alkaloids businesses “were the true cause of the opioid crisis,” instead of the widespread distribution of Oxycontin.

The only opioid products J&J sold in Oklahoma were Duragesic, a fentanyl patch its Janssen unit introduced in 1991, and Nucynta, a pill it began selling in 2009. The company’s products represented less than 1% of Oklahoma Medicaid opioid prescriptions from 1996-2017.

I think they’re going after the wrong defendant. There were much more egregious examples of pharmaceutical company malfeasance.

Kolodny later testified in court that Purdue Pharma and its founding Sackler family “have been stealing the spotlight, but Johnson & Johnson, in some ways, has been even worse.”

He also intimated, without specifically saying so, that J&J had coordinated with Purdue to produce a new strain of poppy rich in thebaine, a type of opioid, to supply expected rising demand for Oxycontin.

Now he’s peddling conspiracy theories with wild conjectures completely outside his area of expertise (corporate coordination). He’s become so extreme in his views and wandered so far from mainstream science/fact/research that it’s becoming obvious he’s spouting nonsense.

“This extended, free-form commentary about the State’s evidence over which the witness lacks both personal knowledge and expertise is not testimony at all, much less expert testimony,” J&J said in its filing. “It is advocacy, nothing more.”

Oh, how I delight in seeing his nonsense finally being called out as the extreme fundamentalism it is.

Kolodny testified he has been working as a paid expert for Oklahoma nearly full-time with the state for months. In testimony, he said his fee is in the mid-six figures.

Wow, can anyone believe his testimony isn’t totally biased and corrupted by such huge amounts of money?

Expert witnesses are intended to present opinions on complex matters to help the finder of fact, either a judge or jury, determine which party’s case is closer to the truth.

The state’s case is based upon a simple theory, reiterated throughout the trial by lead plaintiff lawyer Brad Beckworth, a private attorney whose firm has already reaped part of the $59 million in fees awarded in Purdue’s settlement with Oklahoma: “If you oversupply, people will die.”

It is calling experts like Kolodny to establish the cause-and-effect relationship, although it is not expected to call a single physician who relied on improper marketing to overprescribe opiates, or a single patient who received medically unnecessary opiates.

Oklahoma seems to be so spellbound by Kolodny’s anti-opioid zealotry that their whole case is based on his opinionated testimony and his manipulated and outdated “facts”.

Apparently, they haven’t noticed that the extreme numbers and convoluted assumptions he throws out don’t match reality.

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6 thoughts on “J&J moves to strike Kolodny testimony”

Too bad he’s getting paid so much. Looks like that money was totally wasted-for them. Kolodney thinks that everyone will take his words as gospel but maybe now these politicians etc who listened to him before will finally see what a egotistical murdering torturous liar he is. Then maybe we can get to a review of the guidelines that came about by him & his prop cronies. In other words, maybe now we can have everything he’s done regarding the fake prescription opiods questioned thoroughly.
But I won’t hold my breath.

Maybe the lies will be reveled this time People like Kolodny made a lot of money spreading lies and misinformation. They are doing a lot of damage. I guess these states see a jackpot in these trials, but hopefully in court there will be a real evaluation of the evidence. Others like Dr. Drew Pinsky made a fortune using the addicted to market fly by night treatment centers, back in the early 2000’s. The real problems were the diversion and illegal trade, not doctors and patients.

I came across this today. Nearly every mass media article on opioids,and deceptive statements by Kolodny and others claimed there was “no evidence” of the effectiveness of opioids. Of course people with no medical background or experience with pain, would think an authority like Kolodny would be factual. This is how they deceive with facts.

Perhaps the attack on doctors, and patients serves a bigger purpose, at first it did protect the pharma industry.

The entire manufactured crisis, has been a boon for advertisers, marketers and quacks. They forced dangerous procedures and defective implants on people with pain. The so called opioid epidemic is a great marketing tool. At the same time, people with mental health or addiction problems were shuttled to faith based programs and 12 step programs even though there is no evidence they work.

Perhaps in the future they will look at all of this as genocidal, this is what Market Based healthcare produces. From the Sacklers and their deceptive marketing, to the lies about alternatives, it was all driven by the lust for profit. The CDC and the FDA failed to react in any meaningful way, instead their actions led to more deaths. It was well known that attacking the opioid supply would lead to more deaths, and and increase in illegal drugs. They knew but did not care, since they were making a lot of money “fighting” the epidemic. Making things worse is simply more profitable.

I’m optimistic for the first time that Kolodny’s anti-opioid PROPaganda will finally be debunked for once and for all. He’s going to be yanked out of his “drug-free world” fantasy and be forced to confront realities he doesn’t want to acknowledge (or maybe doesn’t even know).

Andrew Kolodny, the Dr Mengele of pain care is “addicted” to being the self-proclaimed expert on all things opioid. He’s making a fortune of his lies, fabrications, and conspiracies. This narcissistic sociopath needs to be destroyed.

I know of no one in pain who doesn’t want to slap Kolodny in the face. (If I said what they really want to do to him, I’d get detained by law enforcement.)
That evil name will go down in history with all the evil doctors of all time.

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